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Introduction: This program concludes our FTR series on Hindutva fascism (Hindu nationalist fascism). In previous programs, we highlighted key features of the governance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose BJP is a political front for the RSS. Formed along the lines of Mussolini’s Blackshirts in 1925, the RSS was the organization that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. (We have discussed Modi, the RSS and the BJP in numerous broadcasts, including FTR #’s 795, 889, 441, 442, 445, 988 and989, 990,991.)

In past discussions of the RSS and BJP, we have noted the following:

Modi’s political fortunes were boosted with support and apparent financing from Pierre Omidyar, who also helped finance the rise of the OUN/B fascist successor organizatios in Ukraine.

Modi and his BJP are viewed with great favor by Breitbart kingpin, former Trump campaign manager and adviser Steve Bannon. A number of Trump’s business associates in India are associated with the BJP.

Bernie Sanders’ prospective Vice-Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard helped arrange the details for Modi’s American visit and is networked with the RSS.

The above-mentioned Tulsi Gabbard is a member of the Hare Krishna cult, as is her husband, her in-laws, her parents and her Congressional staff.

Under Modi, anti-Muslim violence has dramatically accelerated, journalistic and civil free speech has been attenuated, opponents of the government have faced various forms of retaliation and oppression, journalists and activists critical of Modi/BJP/RSS have been murdered, a virulently anti-Muslim cleric has been appointed head of Uttar Pradesh (India’s largest province), voting machines have apparently been tampered with, and Indians have expressed positive feelings about martial law. BJP members have celebrated Gandhi’s murder.

Beginning with review of ideological and operational links between RSS Hindutva fascists and the followers of Hitler and Mussolini, we highlight key features of what may seem to many to be a classic case of political “strange bedfellows.” Key considerations in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fascist affinity include:

Opposition to the British Empire (as constituted), admiration for the domestic agendas of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the military prowess shown by the European Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades prior to that momentous event, senior RSS members had direct links to both Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Part of the RSS’ fascination with these totalitarian regimes was their shared opposition to the British Empire — however, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as multitudes of other Hindu nationalists) admired the way Mussolini and Hitler reorganized their respective nations so quickly from the wreckage of war to build a powerful economy and military under the banner of patriotism and nationalism. . . .”

The studied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affinity: ” . . . . Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar who studied Indian politics, once wrote of RSS’ connections with European fascism: The existence of direct contacts between the representatives of the [Italian] Fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism. The interest of Indian Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals; rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists… focused on Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example of conservative revolution. . . .”

Belief in the common, mythological “Aryan” origins of India and Germany: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ideology and imagery came from the symbols and history of ancient India – indeed, the infamous Nazi swastika was based on a Hindu symbol of strength and good fortune. Moreover, the legendary history (some would say, myth) of the invasion of prehistoric India by the mysterious ‘Aryan’ tribes would (centuries later) provide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super master race’ that was destined to dominate the world. . . .”

The enthusiastic embrace of Hitler and Mussolini by V.D. Savarkar, the ideological founder of Hindutva fascism and the primary architect of Gandhi’s assassination: ” . . . . Perhaps there was no greater admirer of Hitler and Mussolini in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, another leading member of RSS.In a speech delivered in 1940 (after the Second World War had commenced), Savarkar said: There is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls himself a Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany under the set of circumstances Germany was placed in. . . .”

The Hindu Mahasabha’s support for a Hitler/RSS conjunction: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hindu nationalists also derided Gandhi for opposing Nazism and fascism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Party) intimately connected Germany with Indian culture and people. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope,’ the spokesman blustered. ‘Only a few Socialists headed by… Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory. . . .’ “

Other RSS leaders saw useful similarities in the ethnic chauvinist philosophy of both Hitler and Hindutva fascism. “. . . .Another senior RSS member, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ideology should be applied to India. ‘German race pride has now become the topic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.’ Golwalkar enthusiastically advocated for an India dominated by Hindus. ‘There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race,’ he wrote. . . . “

Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS ethnic theory and policy as converging: ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hindus should rule India and others should either be expelled or merged into the Hindu majority. ‘The Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus,’ he wrote. ‘Hindus are bound together not only by the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the of the common homage we pay to our great civilization, our Hindu culture. . . .”

Davitri Devi and focal points of her philosophy. Note the Nazi “Black Sun”

The late Savitri Devi was an embodiment of the Hindu/Nazi/Aryan ideological convergence. Devi has been among the elements synthesizing Hindutva fascism with the contemporary “Alt-Right.” Devi has been the focal point of renewed interest:

” . . . . I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name ‘Savitri Devi’ once again. It isn’t hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar – an incarnation – of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work. . . .”

More about the resuscitation of Devi: ” . . . . Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up the account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists. Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end. . . . “

The psychological and political foundation of the Aryan/Hindutva convergence is neatly summed up in the BBC Magazine article we excerpt: ” . . . . Savitri Devi herself is almost forgotten in India now, but the Hindu nationalism she espoused and helped to promote is in the ascendant, much to the concern of her nephew, the veteran left-wing journalist Sumanta Banerjee. ‘In her book A Warning to the Hindus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hindus to cultivate a ‘spirit of organised resistance throughout Hindudom,’ he says. ‘The targets of this resistance were the Muslims, who were a threat, according to her, to the Hindus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.’ . . .”

More about the dynamics behind the “Alt-Right”/Hindutva convergence: ” . . . . Hindutva is the official ideology of Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which claims that Muslims and secularists have undermined the strength of the Hindu nation. Though the party’s official spokesmen condemn violence, the riots that led to the tearing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the current waves of attacks – sometimes fatal – by vigilante groups on Muslims and dissenters tell a different story. . . . “

Highlighting the nature of the ideological similarity between Nazi ethnic policy and Hindutva fascist ideology: “In the US, racism, anti-communism and Christian fundamentalist notions about the impending apocalypse have together prepared the ground for the far right’s flirtation with occult Nazism and Hindu prophecies. And as in India, the traditional ruling majority’s fear of losing power has been an effective recruiting tool. . . .”

Emblem of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion

In addition to the position of Hindutva fascism in the Fascist International , we examine Pierre Omidyar, his espousal of neoliberal economic doctrine, his support for Modi’s Hindutva fascists and his support (along with U.S. intelligence cut-outs like the National Endowment for Democracy and the Agency for International Development) for the Ukrainian OUN/B successor organizations like Pravy Sektor, Svoboda and the Azov Battalion.

In FTR #889, among other programs, we highlighted Omidayar’s devotion to the Austrian school of economic theory.

Omidyar’s neo-liberal, Austrian economic school can be seen in Modi’s enthusiastic reception by Silicon Valley movers and shakers, at the same time that he is moving to weaken India’s child labor laws.

Tulsi Gabbard’s co-sponsorship of a bill that would label opponents of Ukraine’s entrance into the EU as “terrorists.”

Omidyar journalistic protege Glenn Greenwald had Andrew “Weev” Auerenheimer at his party celebrating Greenwald and Laura Poitras’s receipt of the prestigious Polk Award. Weev’s name has been bandied about in connection with the [alleged] hacking of DNC e-mails. We note that Weev is apparently resident in Ukraine. ” . . . . [GOP operative Peter] Smith also reached out to ‘Guccifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intelligence community has linked to Russian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nationalist hacker who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Alt-Right media figure Charles]Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auerenheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias ‘Weev’ and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. . . .”

1a. Palash R. Ghosh presents a detailed analysis of the evolution of the fascist/Hindu nationalist link. Note the affinity of RSS thinkers for the ethnic chauvinism manifested by Hitler.

. . . . The BJP has a very interesting history — officially formed in 1980, its history can be traced much further back to the pre-1947 era when Hindu nationalists not only demanded an independent India, but one completely dominated by Hindus.

The current BJP is the successor of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) party, which itself was the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a group that espoused openly militant Hindu activism and the suppression of minorities in India. . . . .

. . . . What may surprise many in the West is that some of the most prominent figures of RSS deeply admired Fascism and Nazism, the two totalitarian movements that swept through Europe at the time. . . .

. . . . In the decades prior to that momentous event, senior RSS members had direct links to both Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Part of the RSS’ fascination with these totalitarian regimes was their shared opposition to the British Empire — however, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as multitudes of other Hindu nationalists) admired the way Mussolini and Hitler reorganized their respective nations so quickly from the wreckage of war to build a powerful economy and military under the banner of patriotism and nationalism.

With respect to Hitler and Nazism, the links to India and Hinduism were deeper and more profound.

Much of Nazi ideology and imagery came from the symbols and history of ancient India – indeed, the infamous Nazi swastika was based on a Hindu symbol of strength and good fortune. Moreover, the legendary history (some would say, myth) of the invasion of prehistoric India by the mysterious “Aryan” tribes would (centuries later) provide Hitler with his notion of a “super master race” that was destined to dominate the world.

During World War II, some Indian nationalists received explicit support from German Nazis — in fact, some Indian soldiers even served in Hitler’s armies and in the notorious SS.

Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar who studied Indian politics, once wrote of RSS’ connections with European fascism:The existence of direct contacts between the representatives of the [Italian] Fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism.The interest of Indian Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals; rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists… focused on Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example of conservative revolution.

Perhaps there was no greater admirer of Hitler and Mussolini in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, another leading member of RSS.

In a speech delivered in 1940 (after the Second World War had commenced), Savarkar said: There is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls himself a Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany under the set of circumstances Germany was placed in.

Savarkar criticized Nehru for his staunch opposition to fascism.

Who are we to dictate to Germany… or Italy to choose a particular form of policy of government simply?” Savarkar rhetorically asked.

“Surely Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best. The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political ‘isms’ were the most congenial tonics their health demanded.”

Indeed, many Hindu nationalists also derided Gandhi for opposing Nazism and fascism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Party) intimately connected Germany with Indian culture and people.

Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope,” the spokesman blustered.

“Only a few Socialists headed by… Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India.”

He added: “Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory.

While the RSS was not explicitly anti-Semitic (largely because India never had a large Jewish population), Savarkar even praised Hitler’s treatment of the Jews (at least before the death camps and ovens became known to the public at large).

In 1938, during the time of accelerating anti-Jewish legislation in Germany, Savarkar suggested a similar fate for India’s Muslims.

A nation is formed by a majority living therein,” he declared. “What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out from Germany.”

Another senior RSS member, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ideology should be applied to India.

German race pride has now become the topic of the day,” he wrote.

“To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.

Golwalkar enthusiastically advocated for an India dominated by Hindus.

“There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race,” he wrote.

“That is the only sound view on the minorities problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed… The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights.”

If one were to replace “Hindu” with “German,” Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exactly.

Savarkar also spelled out why Hindus should rule India and others should either be expelled or merged into the Hindu majority.

“The Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus,” he wrote.“Hindus are bound together not only by the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the of the common homage we pay to our great civilization, our Hindu culture.

During a speech given to Indian military officers and Indian nationalist Subhash Chandra Bose in Dresden, Germany, in 1943, Hitler himself reportedly said: You are fortunate having been born in a country of glorious cultural traditions and a colossal manpower. I am impressed by the burning passion with which you and your Netaji [Bose] seek to liberate your country from foreign domination. Your Netaji’s status is even greater than mine. While I am the leader of 80 million Germans, he is the leader of 400 million Indians. In all respects he is a greater leader and a greater general than myself. I salute him, and Germany salutes him. It is the duty of all Indians to accept him as their führer and obey him implicitly. I have no doubt that if you do this, his guidance will lead India very soon to freedom.”

After the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in World War II, Hindu nationalists distanced themselves from the totalitarian regimes of Europe.

However, their calls for a “Hindu India” have only strengthened over the years. In the present climate, the RSS and BJP are both generally opposed to the Muslim presence and express extreme hostility toward India’s principal Muslim rival, Pakistan.

Moreover, Nazism, and the mysticism of Adolf Hitler’s warped philosophies, remain an obsession with many Indians, almost 80 years after Der Führer came to power in Germany.

1b. Next, we underscore the participation of Indian nationals as soldiers in the Free Indian Legion, initially allied with the Wehrmacht, and then with the Waffen SS, as well as the armies of Imperial Japan.

. . . . The Indian Legion (German: Indische Legion), officially the Free India Legion (German: Legion Freies Indien) or Infantry Regiment 950 (Indian) (German: Infanterie-Regiment 950 (indisches), I.R. 950) and later the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Waffen-SS (German: Indische Freiwilligen Legion der Waffen-SS), was a military unit raised during the Second World War in Nazi Germany. Intended to serve as a liberation force for British-ruled India, it was made up of Indian prisoners of war and expatriates in Europe. Because of its origins in the Indian independence movement, it was known also as the “Tiger Legion”, and the “Azad Hind Fauj”. Initially raised as part of the German Army, it was part of the Waffen-SS from August 1944. Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose initiated the legion’s formation, as part of his efforts to win India’s independence by waging war against Britain, when he came to Berlin in 1941 seeking German aid. The initial recruits in 1941 were volunteers from the Indian students resident in Germany at the time, and a handful of the Indian prisoners of war who had been captured during the North Africa Campaign. It would later draw a larger number of Indian prisoners of war as volunteers.

Though it was initially raised as an assault group that would form a pathfinder to a German-Indian joint invasion of the western frontiers of British India, only a small contingent was ever put to its original intended purpose. A hundred legionnaires were parachuted into eastern Iran under Operation Bajadere and infiltrated into Baluchistan Province to undertake sabotage operations, which they reportedly did successfully, but with insignificant effect. A small contingent, including much of the Indian officer corps and enlisted leadership, was transferred to the Indian National Army in South-East Asia. The majority of the troops of the Indian Legion were only ever stationed in Europe in non-combat duties, in the Netherlands and in France until the Allied invasion. They saw action in the retreat from the Allied advance across France, fighting mostly against the French Resistance. One company was sent to Italy in 1944, where it saw action against British and Polish troops and undertook anti-partisan operations.

At the time of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the remaining men of the Indian Legion made efforts to march to neutral Switzerland over the Alps, but these efforts proved futile as they were captured by American and French troops and eventually shipped back to India to face charges of treason. Because of the uproar the trials of Indians who served with the Axis caused among civilians and the military of British India, the legion members’ trials were not completed. . . .

1c. The essence and generation of the Nazi/Hindu/”Aryan” mythological dynamic is beyond the scope of the present program. We have covered it in, among other programs, FTR #172, dealing with Savitri Devi, the focal point of a recent BBC podcast.

Savitri Devi, a mystical admirer of Hitler and a cat-loving devotee of the Aryan myth, seemed destined to fade into obscurity after her death 25 years ago. But thanks to the rise of the extreme right, her name and her image now crop up online more and more, writes Maria Margaronis.

In 2012, browsing the website of Greece’s Golden Dawn party for an article I was writing, I stumbled on a picture of a woman in a blue silk sari gazing at a bust of Hitler against a blazing sunset sky.

What was this apparently Hindu woman doing on the site of an openly racist party devoted to expelling all foreigners from Greece? I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name “Savitri Devi” once again.

It isn’t hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar – an incarnation – of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work.

Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up the account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists.

Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end.

Who was Savitri Devi, and why are her ideas being resurrected now? Despite the sari and the name she was a European, born Maximiani Portas to an English mother and Greek-Italian father in Lyon in 1905.

From an early age, she despised all forms of egalitarianism. “A beautiful girl is not equal to an ugly girl,” she told an interviewer sent by the Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in 1978.

Swept up by Greek nationalism, she arrived in Athens in 1923 at the same time as thousands of refugees displaced after Greece’s disastrous military campaign in Asia Minor at the end of World War One.

She blamed the Western allies for Greece’s humiliation, and for what she saw as the unjustly punitive terms imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. In Savitri’s mind, Greece and Germany were both victims, denied the legitimate aspiration of uniting all their people in one territory. That view, combined with a passionate anti-Semitism which she claimed she learned from the Bible, led her to identify herself early on as a National Socialist.

Hitler was Germany’s champion but, she said, his desire to eradicate Europe’s Jews and restore the “Aryan race” to its rightful position of power made him her “Fuhrer” too.

In common with anti-Semitic thinkers since the 18th century, Savitri blamed Judeo-Christianity for destroying the glory that was Greece and the Aryans’ mythical ancient utopia. In the early 1930s she sailed for India in search of a living version of Europe’s pagan past, convinced that the caste system, by forbidding intermarriage, had preserved pure Aryans there. (Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who visited India in the 1970s, shared her misconception.)

So unusual was the sight of a European woman travelling fourth class by train that she was placed under surveillance by the British colonial authorities. But Savitri had little to do with the British in India until World War Two, when she passed information she gleaned from them to the Japanese. She learned Indian languages, married a Brahmin (whom she believed to be an Aryan like herself), and forged an elaborate synthesis of Nazism and Hindu myth, in which Hitler was a “man against time” destined to bring about the end of the Kali Yuga and usher in a new golden age of Aryan supremacy.

Davitri Devi and focal points of her philosophy. Note the Nazi “Black Sun,” part of the emblem of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion.

In Kolkata in the 1930s, Savitri worked for the Hindu Mission, now a quiet neighbourhood shrine but in those days a centre for Hindu nationalist campaigning and missionary activity. The politicisation of India’s religious communities under the British had helped to foster the growth of the Hindutva movement, which argued that the Hindus were the true heirs of the Aryans and that India was an essentially Hindu nation.

Savitri offered her services to the Mission’s director, Swami Satyananda, who (like many Indians before independence) shared her admiration for Hitler and allowed her to mix Nazi propaganda with her talks on Hindu identity. She travelled the country lecturing in Hindi and Bengali, salting her talks about Aryan values with quotations from Mein Kampf.

In 1945, devastated by the fall of the Third Reich, she returned to Europe to work for its restoration. Her arrival in England is described in her book Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, a children’s fable whose heroine is a cat-loving Nazi like herself.

The heroine, Heliodora, “had no ‘human feelings’ in the ordinary sense of the word,” she wrote. “She had been, from her very childhood, much too profoundly shocked at the behaviour of man towards animals… to have any sympathy for people suffering on account of their being Jews.”

Savitri was always clear that she preferred animals to humans. Like Hitler, she was a vegetarian. She viewed the world as if from a great distance, caring more for what she saw as the deep patterns of nature than for human lives. Visiting Iceland, she spent two nights on the slopes of Mount Hekla as it erupted. “The original sound of creation is ‘Aum’,” she wrote. “The volcano says every two or three seconds, ‘AUM! AUM! AUM!’ And the Earth is trembling under your feet all the time.”

In 1948, Savitri managed to enter occupied Germany, where she distributed thousands of pro-Nazi leaflets, bearing the words: “One day we shall rise and triumph again! Hope and wait! Heil Hitler!”

Emblem of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion

She said years later that she was glad to be arrested by the British occupation authorities because it brought her closer to her jailed Nazi “comrades”. During her imprisonment, which was cut short by her husband’s intervention through the Indian government, she grew close to a former Belsen wardress condemned as a war criminal, “a beautiful-looking woman, a blonde of about my age.” Savitri’s sexuality has been the subject of some speculation. Her marriage to Asit Mukherjee was allegedly celibate because they were not of the same caste; the Nazi financier Francoise Dior, niece of the fashion designer, claimed to have been her lover.

In her later years, Savitri Devi returned to India, where she seemed to feel most at home. Living in a flat above a garage on a quiet Delhi street she devoted herself to the neighbourhood cats, going out every morning to feed them bread and milk bedecked in the gold jewellery traditionally worn by married Hindu women.

She died at a friend’s house in England in 1982. Her ashes were laid to rest with full fascist honours, purportedly next to those of American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell.

Savitri Devi herself is almost forgotten in India now, but the Hindu nationalism she espoused and helped to promote is in the ascendant, much to the concern of her nephew, the veteran left-wing journalist Sumanta Banerjee.

“In her book A Warning to the Hindus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hindus to cultivate a ‘spirit of organised resistance throughout Hindudom,'” he says. “The targets of this resistance were the Muslims, who were a threat, according to her, to the Hindus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.”

Hindutva is the official ideology of Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which claims that Muslims and secularists have undermined the strength of the Hindu nation. Though the party’s official spokesmen condemn violence, the riots that led to the tearing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the current waves of attacks – sometimes fatal – by vigilante groups on Muslims and dissenters tell a different story.

In the US, racism, anti-communism and Christian fundamentalist notions about the impending apocalypse have together prepared the ground for the far right’s flirtation with occult Nazism and Hindu prophecies.

And as in India, the traditional ruling majority’s fear of losing power has been an effective recruiting tool.

“Since the middle of the Obama administration the single most important factor in the minds of people who joined the Tea Party was the idea that white people were being shoved aside,” says researcher and writer Chip Berlet. “The far right and organised white supremacist groups have both been buoyed up by fear among many white citizens in the United States that they’re being displaced and humiliated.”

Savitri Devi’s work forms part of the history of both India’s Hindu nationalists and the European and American extreme right. Her flamboyant, eccentric writings contain – unvarnished and uncensored – all their key ideas: that human beings can be divided into “races” which should be kept separate; that certain groups are superior to and more entitled than others; that these groups are under threat; and that the dark times in which we live will only end when they again take power, returning us to a mythical golden age.

2. In FTR #889, we set forth Pierre Omidyar’s efforts in bringing both the OUN/B successor groups to power in Ukraine, as well as his support for the BJP and Narendra Modi’s successful electoral efforts.

[This is excerpted from an interview author Douglas Valentine gave with Ryan Dawson.] VALENTINE: The Centre UA is the organization that Pierre Omidyar co-funded two years ago. Center UA is an umbrella organization that is linked to various activist projects and NGOs, one of which is the New Citizen campaign which, according to the Financial Times, “played a big role in getting the protest up and running.” . . . . Why did Omidyar prove willing to come on board with such known regime-change sponsors as USAID and NED –to say nothing of Soros? Where else is he [co]operating? It should never be forgotten that this is the kind of company he keeps. Why?

While Omidyar was born in Paris and his parents moved to Maryland from France when he was young, he appears to be of Iranian descent. His mother was a Farsi linguist and as of 2016, is president of the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. As bizarre as it may seem, little information is publicly available about his father, including his name. He apparently was a urologist or surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and if that was the case, his name should be available. The secrecy suggests some sort of intelligence connection, perhaps to the type of upper class emigre circles the CIA cultivates in America. It is fact that the CIA station in Iran served as one of the Agency’s main bases for agent operations against the Soviets. . . .

. . . . Maybe Pierre Omidyar is accessible to US foreign policy agencies due to some prior family connections. Maybe that accounts for why he spent a few hundred thousand dollars (a paltry sum for a billionaire) to hep put the Centre UA in place in Ukraine: so the CIA could run operations against the Russians, like it did out out of Iran. I’ve never heard any explanation from inquisitive Glenn Greenwald. When it comes to his sugar daddy’s monkey business, Greenwald’s policy is pure “seeno, hear no, speak no evil.” Why? Is that the quid pro quo for the handout?

What I do know is that billionaires like Omidyar and George Soros and the Rockefellers–to say nothing of USAID and NED–aren’t funding political action out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re doing it to advance their interests. That’s why an organization like Centre UA is created: to advance the interest of its financial backers. to me it looks like a CIA-facilitated mechanism to create a crisis in Ukraine and exploit it. The 40 NGOs it coordinates are perfectly placed to provide cover for covert CIA political action. . . .

3a. Epitomizing the amoral perspective lurking behind the very successful public relations manifested by Big Tech is their courting of Narendra Modi.

Mr. Modi, the prime minister of India, oversees a nation of 1.25 billion people. Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, runs a social network with 1.5 billion active users. Both see themselves as global leaders pushing for broad social change, and both routinely use social media to communicate with their many millions of fans.

On Sunday, the two men engaged in a mutual admiration session at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters, with Mr. Modi fielding preselected questions from a crowd of Facebook employees and guests invited by the Indian Embassy.

Mr. Modi praised social networks like Facebook, Twitter and even China’s Weibo as useful tools for governing and diplomacy. . . .

. . . . Silicon Valley has been eager to assist. . . . .

3b. We noted that Narendra Modi was politically evolved from the Hindu nationalist/fascist milieu of the RSS, one of whose members murdered Gandhi.)

In addition, we have seen that Modi’s election was heavily buttressed by Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar, who has underwritten Glenn Greenwald’s recent journalistic ventures and partially bankrolled the 2014 Ukraine coup that brought the heirs of the OUN/B to power.

Modi is implementing the laissez-faire agenda favored by Omidyar, a cynical “corporatist” agenda that is poised to restore child labor in India.

The laissez-faire/corporatist agenda championed by Omidyar and Modi is at one with the “austerity” doctrine promulgated by the GOP, Germany, the IMF and the Underground Reich.

“Get to work, kids! And be sure to bring your wages home to your [unemployed] mom and dad.”

An amend­ment to the Child Labour Pro­hi­bi­tion Act pro­posed by the Naren­dra Modi-led gov­ern­ment is about to undo years of hard-won progress in the area of child labour—and con­demn mil­lions of kids to exploita­tive employment.

The amend­ment will allow chil­dren below the age of 14 to work in “fam­ily enter­prises”—a euphemism for indus­tries such as carpet-weaving, beedi–rolling, gem-polishing, lock-making and matchbox-making. The new norms will also apply to the enter­tain­ment indus­try and sports.

The amend­ment flies in the face of the Right to Edu­ca­tion Act (RTE), 2009, which guar­an­tees edu­ca­tion to every child. After the RTE came in, child labour dropped from 12.6 mil­lion in 2001 to 4.3 mil­lion in 2014. The amend­ment will undo much of that progress. It will also be a seri­ous set­back to all the work done by activists, such as Swami Agnivesh and Nobel lau­re­ate Kailash Sat­yarthi, to res­cue chil­dren from bonded labour and exploitation.

“All our cam­paigns to end bonded child labour, start­ing from the eight­ies, will go up in smoke,” Khan said. “Schools will be emp­tied out, and poor chil­dren in states like Bihar, Jhark­hand and Uttar Pradesh will be back to work­ing in sheds and makeshift fac­to­ries that will all go by the nomen­cla­ture of ‘fam­ily enter­prises.’ The worst-hit will be the chil­dren of Dal­its, Mus­lims, tribal fam­i­lies and those belong­ing to mar­gin­alised communities.”

The amend­ment can also be used to deny edu­ca­tion to the girl child, who will be sucked into all forms of house­work. Accord­ing to gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics, male lit­er­acy lev­els in 2014 stood at about 82%, while female lit­er­acy lev­els were as low as 64%. The school drop-out rate for girls is almost dou­ble the rate for boys.

An uncon­sti­tu­tional change

Ban­daru Dat­ta­treya, India’s min­is­ter of labour and employ­ment, announced in early April that the gov­ern­ment planned to intro­duce amend­ments to the Child Labour Pro­hi­bi­tion Act in the cur­rent ses­sion of Parliament.

His min­istry, while seek­ing the amend­ments, said the Act will not apply to chil­dren help­ing fam­i­lies in home-based work, and espe­cially fam­i­lies work­ing in agri­cul­ture and animal-rearing. The objec­tive of these amend­ments, accord­ing to min­istry offi­cials, is to help chil­dren nur­ture a spirit of entre­pre­neur­ship. They will par­tic­u­larly help chil­dren of fam­i­lies cur­rently liv­ing at sub­sis­tence lev­els, the min­istry claims.

Child rights activists say the move will ben­e­fit fac­tory own­ers in India’s cow belt. Their prof­its will esca­late four­fold as chil­dren could be made to work longer hours and paid less than adults.

…

Enakshi Gan­guly Thukral of HAQ Cen­tre for Child Rights believes this is an attempt by the Modi gov­ern­ment to ensure a size­able chunk of the pop­u­la­tion remains in the infor­mal sec­tor, deprived of min­i­mum wages and social security.

“The gov­ern­ment is not in a posi­tion to pro­vide jobs for mil­lions of young peo­ple,” said Thukral. “Such a ret­ro­grade step will help ensure mil­lions of kids remain illit­er­ate and, there­fore, unemployable.”

Bad old days again

Major cut­backs in the 2015 bud­get in the areas of health, women and chil­dren, and edu­ca­tion will fur­ther com­pound this prob­lem. Thukral said labour offi­cials are already guilty of under-reporting child labour. “But once child labour is per­mit­ted under one guise or the other, then even a min­i­mum [level] of account­abil­ity will cease to exist,” she said.

Labour offi­cials at the dis­trict level are empow­ered to file cases against employ­ers hir­ing chil­dren but few employ­ers are ever con­victed. Sta­tis­tics from the labour min­istry for 2004–2014 show that there have been 1,168 con­vic­tions for chil­dren employed in haz­ardous indus­tries with about Rs83 lakh col­lected in fines. This money has been des­ig­nated for the reha­bil­i­ta­tion and wel­fare of child labour. How­ever, in this period, only Rs5 lakh was dis­bursed from this fund.

Khan recalls the period before the RTE Act, when dalals (touts) openly knocked on the doors of rich seths (mer­chants or busi­ness­men) to sell traf­ficked children.

“In the eight­ies, kids were being paid a daily wage of as lit­tle as Rs4 per day,” he said. “We kept up pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment, insist­ing that all out-of-school kids be cat­e­gorised as child labour. This open traf­fick­ing of kids declined sharply with the RTE Act. If the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) suc­ceeds in intro­duc­ing such a dan­ger­ous amend­ment, we will be back to those old days.” . . . .

4. In FTR #991, among other programs, we chronicled Gabbard’s profound, long-standing involvement with a branch of the Hare Krishna cult headed by Chris Butler.

In a Huffington Poststory about Gabbard and the Butler branch of the Hare Krishnas, the author mentioned that he could find no record of Gabbard having made a public pronouncement of being an acolyte of Butler. We thought this strange, since an archive about the Butler cult contained an embedded video in which Gabbard describes Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, as her guru.

At the time of recording, we though that “Civil Beat” was a feature of the Huffington Post. It turns out that there is much more to the story.

Civil Beatwas carried by the Huffington Post, however it was an early journalistic venture of Pierre Omidyar, whose better known journalistic effort, First Look Media, enfolds The Intercept, the media voice for Nazi fellow-traveler Glenn Greenwald.

The odd inability of the Civil Beat writer to find Gabbard’s easily accessed public announcement of her fealty to Butler is more comprehensible in light of Omidyar’s joint sponsorship of the publication and Modi’s regime in India.

….In 2010, Omidyar launched online an investigative reporting news service, Honolulu Civil Beat, covering civic affairs in Hawaii. The site has been named Best News Website in Hawaii for three consecutive years.[18] On September 4, 2013, Honolulu Civil Beat started a partnership with The Huffington Post, launching the weblog’s latest regional addition, HuffPost Hawaii….

5a. Gabbard, her family, her fiance and in-laws-to-be and their respective milieux are inextricably linked with a branch of the Hare Krishna cult headed by Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa.

. . . . “Civil Beat found” no evidence that Tulsi Gabbard is — or ever was — a Butler devotee. And we could find no record of her ever speaking publicly about it. [This is patently untrue, as we shall see below–D.E.]. . .

5b. The Huffington Post article above discounts any public pronouncements by Gabbard about Butler being her guru. These are contradicted in the third embedded video contained in the post below. At around 3:45, she credits Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsawith being her guru.

5c. After Bhaktivedanta Swami’s death, ISKCON (Hare Krishna Cult) fragmented into many different factions. They receive money from opaque sources. We wonder if the Bormann network may be behind that money?

. . . . Nori Muster worked for 10 years as ISKCON’s publicist, before quitting in disgust. She thinks the group is beyond hope.

“They don’t like to let people know there’s really as much chaos as there is,” she says of ISKCON’s leadership. In 1997, Muster published her book, Betrayal of Spirit, about her 10 years in ISKCON’s publicity department.

“What you have now is just a dying thing that’s kind of lingering,” she says. “It would take a lot for them to turn it around at this point. And that would involve being more honest about their history, opening up more about their finances, and where they get their money from, which we still can’t figure out They (the leaders) have access to lots of money and they channel it where they want it.”

6. Omidyar journalistic protege Glenn Greenwald had Andrew “Weev” Auerenheimer at his party celebrating Greenwald and Laura Poitras’s receipt of the prestigious Polk Award. Weev’s name has been bandied about in connection with the [alleged] hacking of DNC e-mails. We note that Weev is apparently resident in Ukraine.

The saga of Peter Smith’s quest to obtain 33,000 emails deleted by Hillary Clinton—an effort now at the center of intrigue swirling around the Donald Trump campaign’s ties to Russia—keeps getting weirder.

In his Hail Mary bid to tip the election to Trump, the Republican private equity executive enlisted two controversial alt-right activists to help him understand the workings of the internet and make contacts in Trump’s orbit, according to interviews with those involved and emails obtained by Politico.

The activists, the journalist-turned-entrepreneur Charles Johnson and his former business partner Pax Dickinson, agreed to help Smith’s quixotic mission, which failed to track down copies of Clinton’s emails. Johnson is a polarizing figure who was banned from Twitter in 2015 after promoting an effort to “take out” a Black Lives Matter activist but maintains ties to White House officials. Smith also reached out to “Guccifer 2.0”—an alias the U.S. intelligence community has linked to Russian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nationalist hacker who lives in Ukraine. . . .

. . . .Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias “Weev” and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. . . .

6. A House Resolution with Gabbard as one of its cosponsors: House Res 447: